The Scarlet Letters (8 page)

If Maud Ashton was still thinking such noble thoughts, hope was not dead.

The second point advanced Ellery no further than the first. He visited 547 Fifth Avenue on Friday and discovered from the directory in the lobby that the Froehm Air-Conditioner Company occupied Suite 902-912, while Humber & Kahn, jewelers, had their showroom in 921. The occurrence of the ninth floor in the case of both envelopes suggested a certain line of investigation, and Ellery duly pursued it after six o'clock on Saturday afternoon, when most of the tenants of the building were gone. But he did not come empty-handed. First, on Saturday morning, he made one of his rare excursions to Brooklyn, to the home of an old man who owned a world-famous collection of theatrical photographs. Here, after representing himself as a feature writer for
The New York Times Magazine
, Ellery rented a set of studio portraits of stage stars who had played Hamlet in New York within living memory. Among them, as it happened, was a portrait of Van Harrison.

In The 45th Street Building Ellery prudently signed the after-hours check-in book in the elevator with the name “Barnaby Ross” and got off at the ninth floor. The sound of a vacuum cleaner led him to the propped-open door of a lighted office, and here he found a brawny-armed old woman in a tattered housedress with an apron over it.

“There's nobody here,” she said, without looking up.

“Oh, yes, there is,” said Ellery sternly. “There's you, and there's me, and it won't go any further if you come clean.”

“Come what?” the cleaning woman straightened. “Don't you know you could go to jail for what you did, Mother?”

“I didn't do nothing!” she said excitedly. “What did I do?”

“You tell me.” And Ellery thrust under her nose the portrait of Van Harrison.

The old woman paled. “He said nobody'd ever know …”

“There you are. You got them for him, didn't you?”

She looked him in the eye. “You a cop?”

Ellery sneered. “Do I look like a cop?”

“You won't tell the super?”

“I wouldn't give that screw the time of day.”

“The man give me a big tip to keep my mouth shut …”

“I gather,” said Ellery, removing a bill from his billfold, “that to open it again will require something larger.”

“I'm a poor woman,” said the old lady, eying the bill in Ellery's fingers, “and is that a twenty? The story is this: This good-looking gentleman comes up here one night after hours, like you, and he says to me he'll make it worth my while if I'll borry a few envelopes from some of the business offices on my floors, that's the eighth, ninth, and tenth. I says I can't do that, that's dishonest, and he says sure you can, what's dishonest about it, you heard of people who collect stamps and matchboxes and stuff, well I'm a collector of business envelopes, I go all over the city making deals like this with cleaning women who can use an extra few bucks rather than bother busy business people and maybe get thrown out on my ear. So one thing leads to another, and I get him a stack of different envelopes from different firms on the three floors, and he gives me the tenspot and goes away, and I ain't laid eyes on him since. And that's the whole truth, Mister, so help me, and I hope you won't get me into no trouble with the super because I wasn't doing no harm, just a few lousy envelopes for a fruitcake. So now can I have that twenty?”

“The Dead End Kid, that's me,” sighed Ellery; and he gave the old cleaning woman the bill, raised his hat, and went away.

The third letter came the following Wednesday. It was camouflaged in the envelope of a firm of accountants on the tenth floor of The 45th Street Building, the address on the envelope and the message on the sheet of plain white paper inside had again been typed with a red ribbon, and the message was:

Thursday, 8:30
P.M
., C

This triumph of reasoning consoled Ellery until the following night, when he trailed Martha downtown on almost the identical route of ten days before. But this time her cab penetrated deeper south into The Bowery, passed the Canal Street entrance to Manhattan Bridge, and turned into the narrow Asiatic world of Mott Street.

It drew up at Number 45, and Martha disappeared in the Chinese Rathskeller.

So
C
stood for Chinatown and/or Chinese Rathskeller, and there was no longer any reason to doubt the orthodox sequence or application of the alphabet in Harrison's code.

It seemed like a meaty discovery until it was examined. On dissection it proved nutritious in appearance only. It advanced nothing.

Ellery felt sad as he went into the restaurant after an automatic interval and maneuvered himself to a table far enough away from Martha and Harrison to see without being seen. It all seemed so futile. What was he doing in Chinatown, spying on two people who were headed for the front pages of the tabloids? As he sourly consumed his
lot-fon-kare-ngow-yuk–
which had turned out to be beef, peppers, and tomatoes–he kept his eye on the lovers from a sense of duty only, conscious that he was not even aware of what he was being dutiful to.

And then he saw something that caused his gloomy ruminations to stop dead.

He had thought they were holding hands across the table. But when the waiter appeared with a trayful of steaming bowls, their hands parted company and Ellery saw that Harrison's had hold of something Martha's had slipped into it.

It was a small package, and the actor, after looking around, put it into his pocket.

D …

“No, I don't,' said Ellery, steering Nikki around a mink coat holding a Scottie on a leash that was eying his leg thoughtfully. “It was done up in paper–in that lighting I couldn't get the color–and it was about three by
six
, and a half-inch or so thick.”

“The booklet?” Nikki stopped to lean against the apartment house. It was a moonless night, and the river sounds were mournful. Everything floated tonight, people and sound and her thoughts.

“Wrong dimensions. What's the matter, Nikki?”

“Oh … I feel anesthetized. Swimming around in the ether. I keep forgetting what day it is.”

“You're drugged with tension. Nikki, you can't keep on living like this. You'll break down. Why not give it up as a nice try?”

“No,” said Nikki mechanically. She shook her head at a cigaret.

Ellery scowled as he lit one. He had never known this Nikki. She was as immovable as the wall she leaned against. He wondered what Martha would say–what depths of shame and remorse she might plumb–if she knew the heavy strength of Nikki's loyalty. But he knew he could never communicate such a thing to anyone in the world, especially to Martha. It had a mysterious, insoluble quality, like a faith, blind and so able to endure in darkness. And it occurred to him suddenly that Nikki had lost her mother very early and had never known a sister.

He sighed.

“You didn't spot anything roughly that size about the apartment, I suppose?”

“She wouldn't leave it lying around, Ellery.”

“I'd have dismissed it as a meaningless gift, except that he looked around so peculiarly as he slipped it into his pocket. He was surreptitious about it. It wasn't in character. Or maybe it was. With a man of Harrison's type, you'd have to strip away a great many layers of hardened greasepaint before you got down to him … And Martha was relieved, it seemed to me. As if she'd found it a load to carry around. I don't understand it.”

“Where did they go afterward?” asked Nikki dully. “She didn't get home till eleven-thirty.”

“They didn't go anywhere. They left the Chinese Rathskeller about ten o'clock and simply drove around in a taxi until he dropped her off at Lexington and 42nd. She took another cab and went straight home. Where was she supposed to be tonight?”

“At the Music Hall catching the new Stanley Kramer picture to scout an unknown young actress she was tipped off about as a possible lead for the Greenspan play.”

“That's taking a chance,” muttered Ellery. “Suppose Dirk asks her about it? She's getting reckless.”

“No,” said Nikki. “Because Dirk doesn't know she saw the picture at a private showing two weeks ago.”

“Oh,” said Ellery.

Nikki said, “It's late, Ellery. I'd better be getting back upstairs.”

They walked slowly along the pavement, and after a moment Ellery said, “About that booklet-”

“I've looked high and low for it, Ellery. I've gone through her night table, her secretary, her vanity, her bureau drawers, hatboxes, top shelf of her clothes closet–even the linen closet, the broom closet, and under her mattress. Wherever Dirk isn't apt to run across it. And … twice I went through her bag.”

“Incredible!” exclaimed Ellery. “She must refer to it every time she gets a code message. Unless she's memorized all the code places, which doesn't seem likely. Have you thought of keeping an eye on her the mornings the letters come?”

“Of course, but I can hardly follow her into her bedroom when she's shut the door, Ellery. Or into the bathroom.”

“No.” And Ellery walked in silence. Then he said, “Nikki, I've got to get into the apartment.”

Nikki stopped.

“It's got to be searched till the booklet is found. Knowing in advance where they're to meet at any given time may mean the difference between … well, it's obviously of the greatest importance. That code book's in the apartment somewhere–I can't see Martha running the risk of carrying it around with her. When is the next evening you're sure they'll both be out of the apartment at the same time?”

“This Saturday night. They're going to a party at the Boylands' in Scarsdale.”

“There's no chance of a slip?”

“They're being picked up by Sarah and Jim Winegard–they're all driving up in Jim's car. That means they're more or less at the Winegards' mercy for transportation back. And you know Jim. He'll be the last one to leave.”

“All right,” said Ellery. “But let's play it smart. Tell them I'm coming up–if they don't mind–to clear out some manuscript correspondence with you on
EQMM.
Then nobody can accuse me of anything but slave-driving! … Good night.”

“Good night, Ellery.”

She looked so white and forlorn in the light of the entrance side-lamps that Ellery put his arms around her and kissed her in full view of the night doorman mopping down the lobby.

Ellery walked into the Lawrence apartment at five minutes after nine Saturday night, and at exactly nine-seven he found Martha's code book.

Nikki had admitted him to the apartment and left him in the living room while she stepped into the adjoining study to fetch her compact. She was just reaching for it in her bag beside the typewriter when Ellery appeared smiling in the doorway and holding aloft a paper-backed little book with a brightly colored laminated cover.

“Here it is,” he said.

Nikki gaped as if he had been holding up the Gutenberg Bible.

Ellery went over to Dirk's green leather chair and settled himself with enjoyment. He began to leaf through the book.

“No,” choked Nikki. “This is
too
much.”

“What?” said Ellery. “Oh. Pooh. It was nothing at all.”

“Oh, wasn't it,” said Nikki fiercely. “Where did you find it? I've ransacked this apartment inside out, top to bottom, I don't know how many times!”

“Of course you did,” said Ellery in a soothing voice, “and that's why you didn't find it. First principles, Nik. See Poe, Edgar Allan. Specifically
The Purloined Letter.”

“An
obvious
place?”

“Right under your nose, sweetheart. It stood to reason that, if you couldn't find it in any of the hiding places you'd expect it to be, it must be in the one place nobody would dream of searching.”

“But where?”

“Did you ever know a better place to hide a book than the average American bookcase?”

“On the living-room bookshelves,” gasped Nikki.

“Sandwiched between a 1934
World Almanac
,” nodded Ellery, “and a copy of Darwin's
The Origin of Species.
In such company this little book could stand there undetected for three generations. Aren't you going to take a look at it?”

Nikki stalked over, head high, but craning. Ellery laughed and pulled her down, and after a moment she snuggled with a sigh into a comfortable position, and they looked the little book over together.

It was a guidebook by Carl Maas,
How to Know and Enjoy New York
, published in 1949 by the New American Library at thirty-five cents. The cover, which was illustrated by a photographic montage of Radio City, Times Square and New York Harbor, advertised its contents: “Where to Eat,” “What to See,” “How to Avoid the Clip Joints,” and so on. It was written as a running account of the city's geography and places of interest, and one of its convenient features was that all place-names were printed in italic or in boldface type, making them stand out from the page.

Apparently Van Harrison had found this feature convenient, too, for here and there throughout the book certain place-names had been circled in red pencil, emphasizing them doubly.

“Confirms what we suspected,” murmured Ellery. “I don't see a single duplication of places beginning with the same letter of the alphabet. It apparently runs once from
A
to
Z
. Let's check the
B
message. That ‘Sammy's' of Sammy's Bowery Follies still bothers me.”

“You passed it! Page nineteen.”

“He put a red ring around ‘Bowery Follies' and ignored the ‘Sammy's' preceding it! So that's how Martha knew that was the
B
-place …”

“Wait, Ellery. Here's Chinatown on the facing page, and it's not ringed–”

“I think I spotted it back here in the Foreign Restaurants section … Yes, here, page eighty-six. Red ring around ‘Chinese Rathskeller' and ‘45 Mott.' Thorough performer, isn't he? If he hadn't ringed the Chinatown address, too, she might have gone kiting off to the uptown branch on West 51st.”

“Red,” said Nikki. “Everything in red. I keep thinking of that darned scarlet letter.”

“I'm tempted to say it's a manifestation of Harrison's sense of humor, but who knows? It may have a much simpler explanation. Tell you what you do, Nikki. Get over to the machine and type out this list as I give it to you. We'll forget
A
,
B
, and
C
–that's history. Make it
D
for whatever-it-is, and so on. I'll give you the page numbers, too. I may want to get a copy of the book for possible future developments.”

“Carbon?”

“No. And I'll take the original with me. It's safer out of the apartment.”

Ellery read the ringed items off as he came to them, page by page. When he had finished, Nikki made a second list, rearranging the items on the first sheet in alphabetical order. The original draft Ellery tore to shreds and flushed down the toilet.

“Now let's see what we have. Read them off, Nikki.”

The list Nikki read contained twenty-three items, from
D
through
Z
:

 

 

“He's certainly playful,” said Nikki wearily. “His mother must have been frightened by a sightseeing bus.”

“It's probably a line he's worked out,” said Ellery. “These great lovers are like the people who hang around the casinos. They've always got a system to beat the wheel. You can't deny it has its charm, Nikki.”

“It escapes me.”

“Well, it's apparently working on Martha. It adds a note of dash to the affair, no doubt. It's lucky he didn't have a copy of
The Third Man;
he'd have had her meeting him in a sewer.” Ellery studied the list again. “I'm a lot more puzzled by something else.”

“What now?” Nikki put her arms on the desk and her head on her arms.

“Well, their next meeting, for instance.” Ellery glanced at her, but he went on as if he were concentrating on his thought.
“D.
Up to now they've met in pretty safe places-Chinatown, The Bowery; even their meeting at the A–wasn't dangerous the way they handled it. But the Diamond Horseshoe–a nightclub–in the heart of the theatrical district where they're both so well-known … It seems downright careless of Mr. Harrison. Any one of five hundred people might spot them there, and if it got back to Dirk … Are you all right, Nikki?”

“What?” Nikki looked up blearily.

Ellery went around the desk, put his hands under her arms, and lifted. “The meeting,” he said firmly, “is adjourned.”

“I'm all right, Ellery–”

“You're in the last stage of exhaustion. No, I'll put the book back before I leave.” He carried her to her room, kicked the door open, and deposited her on the floor. “Get undressed.”

“It's not even ten o'clock–”

“Do you undress yourself, or do I do it for you?”

Nikki sank wanly onto her makeshift bed. “You would pick a time when I'm half-dead.” She yawned and shivered, hugging herself. “I suppose the next item on the agenda is to watch for the date and time of the Diamond Horseshoe meeting.”

“Never mind that. I'm going to make you some hot milk, and then you're going to bed.”

And the Diamond Horseshoe meeting was an interesting meeting, one point of interest being that it never took place.